This is not a rhetorical question, not when they’re planning to tear down the Sir John Carling.

A sketch. It is 11 storeys high, rising off Carling Avenue on the site of the Central Experimental Farm. It cost about $10 million to build and serves as the national headquarters for Agriculture Canada. It is very big, in the range of 400,000 square feet, home to more than 1,200 workers, and includes an office for the minister.

It opened in 1967.

In case you were dozing just there, please allow me to bonk you over the head with that: It opened in 1967.

Is a 40-year-old building at the end of its useful life? Actually, well beyond it, in this case. In 1994, the Citizen

reported that because of “long-term neglect,” a study had concluded the Carling building may not be worth saving.

In other words, a little more than 25 years after it was built, the federal government was already coming around to the conclusion the Carling building, opened in the glow of Centennial year pride, was kaput.

I hear no outrage about the plan, either, another sign we live in a truly reckless age.

The message on this matter from Public Works, the landlord, is proof the government has banned the use of plain English. An e-mail from a department spokesman says the tower and the east annex are being “deconstructed.”

Sure. And the Titanic didn’t sink, it just “desurfaced.”

The west annex, meanwhile, which serves as the cafeteria, is to be retained and turned into a visitor centre. What, one wonders, will there be left to “visit”?

Herewith a portion of an e-mail explaining the reasons for demolition:

“The SJCB is being deconstructed because the functional performance of the building was deemed ‘poor’ in 1998, building systems were reaching the end of their life cycle and in addition the building envelope is subject to deterioration of the precast cladding.”

There is another peculiar aspect to this story. The Sir John Carling building, not long ago, was given a heritage designation.

The Federal Heritage Building Review Office uses two main designations to assign protection. Some buildings, such as those on Parliament Hill, are considered “classified.”

Others, like the Sir John Carling, are said to be “recognized.” It received its designation in 2004. Yes, if you were dozing just there, in 2004.

How one arm of government can be planning to demolish — sorry, deconstruct — a building while another is assigning it heritage protection is, one supposes, just another day at the office on Planet Guv.

Public Works plans to “consult” with the federal heritage office to determine how to preserve and record the building’s heritage aspects. How you preserve and deconstruct in the same breath is, of course, later that same week on Planet Guv.

The cafeteria, meanwhile, will survive as a fragment of the designer’s vision.

The architect, by the way, was Hart Massey (1918-1997), the son of former governor general Vincent Massey and a man with a considerable reputation in architectural circles.

He is credited with introducing Ottawa to the Bauhaus movement, which relied on simplified forms and “unadorned functionalism,” echoes of which can be seen in the Carling edifice. He designed several houses in Ottawa, at least one of which has made it into architectural reference books.

Has no one raised the question of whether the “deconstruction” is an act of dishonour to Mr. Massey and, indeed, to Sir John Carling, a minister of agriculture in a John A. Macdonald government? I can hardly speak for family or descendants but, at the minimum, it rather seems like the work of shabby guardians.

According to news coverage of the day, Mr. Massey endured repeated criticism over his design and the eventual cost, which grew from $6 million to $10 million. The plans kept changing, however, including the addition of a library and fallout shelter.

Indeed, even the auditor general of the day became involved, scrutinizing Mr. Massey’s fees (roughly $800,000) before the House of Commons public accounts committee.

Planning for the building actually began in 1954 as a way to bring together agriculture staff scattered in 18 locations throughout the capital. By 2003, its future was in grave doubt, with a renovation estimate in excess of $57 million.

The demolition of the building, pending approvals, is scheduled for 2010. Staff have already begun to move out, to the vacated Nortel campus at Baseline and Merivale roads.

It has often been said we live in a disposable society. We’ve arrived at a point, for instance, where the repair of consumer goods is almost unheard of and solid little houses are being demolished all over the city.

But the story of the Sir John Carling building suggests something deeper: the idea of permanence, as a force for stability — in our civic lives, on our city sidewalks, in memory — has lost all value.

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